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Giving Birth in BerkeleyThe father's perspective.

By Michael LewisPosted Monday, Jan. 8, 2007, at 4:50 PM ET

This article is part of an ongoing series by Michael Lewis about the birth of his third child. Click here to read the other entries in the series. Michael Lewis first began his "Dad Again" column after the birth of his second daughter, Dixie, in 2002. Click here to read about that delivery.

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Ring Dings and Nacho Cheese Doritos got Michael Lewis through the delivery of his second child, but nothing helped him get over the neuroses he soon developed. Lewis explained why dads shouldn't neglect their newborns, even though it can take a while to warm up to them. Fathers aren't the only ones who can have trouble bonding with the newest addition—older sisters can get pretty territorial, too.

Worried that imagining might make it so, I retreat up and away from ground zero, and stroke the tippy-top of my wife's head. But this just further isolates me as the character in search of a role—the carrot in the school play. Out of nothing more than a desire to seem busy, I grab hold of one of Tabitha's legs and pull it backward. Then, like the master on a slave ship counting the strokes, I begin to chant. "One, two, three …" I half-expect the doctor and nurses to fall about laughing and tell me to stop, but they don't. I seem, in fact, to have written myself a speaking part. "One! Two! Three!" "One! Two! Three!" Tabitha pushes harder. Her eyes look as if they are about to pop out of her head and ricochet off the ceiling.

"Here it is."

There comes a moment when I cease to be able to watch the birth of what is presumably my child with anything but horror. This is that moment. It's meant to be a beautiful sight—a thing to be videotaped or at least remembered, and played over and again in the mind—but it feels more like a hideous secret to be kept. But the damn mirror makes it hard to avoid. Ten minutes ago there was no place to hide; now there is no place to look. Boy or girl? We didn't know. But girls were all we'd ever done, and we'd spent a lot less time arguing over boys' names than girls'. She'd gone from Clementine to Penelope to Phoebe to Scout and then back to Penelope. At midnight when the water broke all over the living room floor, we were just starting what I assumed would be a long creep back to Clementine. I liked the sound of Penny Lewis but Clementine made you want to sing.